Kim Dotcom today said his new Mega service will offer each user 50GB of free storage space. Those are "very generous limits for free users," Dotcom said on Twitter.

There was bad news to go with that, however. Dotcom said he was "hopeful we could give premium status to former [Megaupload] premium users on #Mega. Our lawyers say we can't at this time. We're working on it." Additionally, Dotcom noted he is seeking court permission to transfer data from former Megaupload user accounts to the new service, but there's no resolution on that yet. Of course, US authorities have fought attempts to return users' files.

50GB is quite a lot more than the free tiers offered by cloud storage and syncing services like Google Drive or Dropbox (although a service called MediaFire actually offers 50GB for free and has apps for the desktop, iOS, and Android). However, Mega has a much different use case. If it's anything like Dotcom's now-shuttered Megaupload service, many people will use it to upload large video files that could eat up 50GB relatively quickly.

And although 50GB is a lot for a free tier in the world of online storage systems, it's actually just a quarter of what Megaupload offered. As we noted after the site was shut down by the feds for alleged copyright law violations, Megaupload users got 200GB of storage for free and could upload files as big as 2GB apiece. To go beyond those limits, you had to pay extra, and we'd assume Mega will have fee-based plans as well.

Dotcom didn't say what the file upload limit will be on Mega. We've asked him on Twitter and will let you know if he replies.

What we do know is that Dotcom will be taking the wraps off his new Mega service more officially this Sunday in New Zealand. Stay tuned, Ars will be covering it.

39 Reader Comments

I plan on using it, and I hope many other people do as well, especially any card carrying members of the ACLU/other rights organizations. Let's make this a real fight when Biden's IP cops take it down.

Trust in what way? Do you mean the privacy of your files (that Mega employees won't look through it, or the Feds)? Or do you mean from a reliability point of view (such as them not doing proper backups / the Feds stealing their servers again)?

Depending on how you can access the service, it might be good for backups (as just yet-another services). Though, personally... I wish at least one of the (free) cloud storage services out there would provide a client that let you mount (not just sync!) the directory. That way, you could do something like create a TrueCrypt container on it, or, likely more efficient, use a system like OS X's sparse bundle encrypted image files (which divides the encrypted "disk" up into small chunks, instead of one massive file). This wouldn't be as secure, but with a very strong key and AES encryption, you should be able to prevent most anyone from being able to access the contents... long as you don't personally piss off the Feds (and if you did, they'd just come to your house and beat you with a wrench, anyways).

Everyone using online file lockers (including Google/MS/Apple stuff) should have local backups. One bug, one mistake or one misunderstanding and account's content is gone or account becomes banned.

I agree, but flip that on its head. I NEVER use online file lockers as the canonical source of any bit of data. Online sources are always backups of the primary data that I store locally. If the online source goes way, then I'm inconvenienced due to the lack of ubiquitous access, but I still have it.

While I'll probably continue to use it again, I'll never put any important files on what I consider fly by night cloud storage. This will be to send larger files to friends and family. I also seriously doubt MegaUpload will be the behemoth that it once was.

Yup I trust Google Drive and Dropbox SO MUCH MORE than I would trust my own backups and local files on hard drives. That does not necessarily extend to other providers but those two I trust a lot. (Its not bad to have a local backup as well of course)

Trust in what way? Do you mean the privacy of your files (that Mega employees won't look through it, or the Feds)? Or do you mean from a reliability point of view (such as them not doing proper backups / the Feds stealing their servers again)?

Depending on how you can access the service, it might be good for backups (as just yet-another services). Though, personally... I wish at least one of the (free) cloud storage services out there would provide a client that let you mount (not just sync!) the directory. That way, you could do something like create a TrueCrypt container on it, or, likely more efficient, use a system like OS X's sparse bundle encrypted image files (which divides the encrypted "disk" up into small chunks, instead of one massive file). This wouldn't be as secure, but with a very strong key and AES encryption, you should be able to prevent most anyone from being able to access the contents... long as you don't personally piss off the Feds (and if you did, they'd just come to your house and beat you with a wrench, anyways).

A NFS, network file share would be positively awesome. Not sure how they would implement that for the windows world but it is pretty close to dead easy in linux.

Isn't Mega supposed to be using pervasive client-side encryption of files? That seemed like a key part of the plan, and a zero-knowledge policy could be a good way to kill many birds with one stone. By making it so that none of the data can be read without having the user owned keys Mega has both made it vastly harder to impossible for other parties to conduct fishing expeditions, and at the same time made it easier to police themselves. I seem to recall that one of the shadier aspects of MU's arguments involved evidence that employees had built internal search tools and such, and were in many cases quite aware of what was going on. Having it all encrypted client-side makes that unfeasible too, and in turn would help preserve them from temptation and ensure that Mega was staying on the right side of the law. They could still have a DMCA takedowns too, though keys would be needed.

Encryption wouldn't be entirely free though. While being client-side it wouldn't cost them any CPU, in fact it might save them CPU by doing away with the need for SSL connections in general (beyond login), it would hit data:

Quote:

And although 50GB is a lot for a free tier in the world of online storage systems, it's actually just a quarter of what Megaupload offered. As we noted after the site was shut down by the feds for alleged copyright law violations, Megaupload users got 200GB of storage for free, and could upload files as big as 2GB apiece.

Totally speculating, but I wonder if encryption plays a part in that. I believe most services make significant use of deduplication to reduce storage costs. If 10,000 people upload the same file, the server can simply store one copy and then have 9999 pointers to it. With a big enough, diverse enough set of users that can be significant space savings. Pervasive client-side encryption though makes that impossible. It also makes corruption a much bigger deal. I'll be curious seeing what their actual business model is in the end. Plenty of other storage services (like SpiderOak) follow that zero-knowledge policy too, but they also offer much, much less space for free. I'm not sure how they plan to handle key sharing, or even if they still plan on a true zero-knowledge policy.

Yup I trust Google Drive and Dropbox SO MUCH MORE than I would trust my own backups and local files on hard drives.

You're a fool. Google and Dropbox do not care anywhere near as much about your data as you do. Offsite backups are important, but the one you can reach out and touch with your own hand is the most trustworthy.

Yup I trust Google Drive and Dropbox SO MUCH MORE than I would trust my own backups and local files on hard drives.

You're a fool. Google and Dropbox do not care anywhere near as much about your data as you do. Offsite backups are important, but the one you can reach out and touch with your own hand is the most trustworthy.

Pfff the funny thing is that people who scream the loudest about backups often have the worst backup scheduling themselves. I know a lot of IT professionals who have no recent backup of their data, not even talking about having a backup in a different location in case of a fire.

Dropbox and Google are professionals and they care A LOT about the safeness of my data. Just because a major data destruction would be deadly for their reputation. I would assume they care more about it than I do.

I will be using this, and uploading whatever files I deem fit; My reasoning is more of a statement than needs based.

Living in Canada, my rights are (for now) protected, so.

Kim's service will succeed, given the recent precedents set by an over-entitled legal presence. If litigation comes, I've no intention of allowing a country's overreaching justice system reach into my back pocket without a warrant -- to turn a phrase.

If KDC is on the button, unless I myself am under investigation, and with good reason, I trust that other jurisdictional formats (Canada in my case) should protect. Add my name to those who will be supporting -that- precedent. As for the 'over-entitled' bit, irony noted

50GB for free? I'd sign up. I've had a couple situations where I need to send a large file to somebody. This would seem to fit the bill. If Dotcom wants to put ads on it. Fine.

As for backups. I don't trust a free service to handle my backups. 4 years of unlimited storage for up to 10 computers at Crashplan cost me $300. I don't know if they'll be around any longer than Dropbox, but atleast now I can have a good reason to be pissed if they go under.

I will be using this, and uploading whatever files I deem fit; My reasoning is more of a statement than needs based.

Living in Canada, my rights are (for now) protected, so.

Kim's service will succeed, given the recent precedents set by an over-entitled legal presence. If litigation comes, I've no intention of allowing a country's overreaching justice system reach into my back pocket without a warrant -- to turn a phrase.

If KDC is on the button, unless I myself am under investigation, and with good reason, I trust that other jurisdictional formats (Canada in my case) should protect. Add my name to those who will be supporting -that- precedent. As for the 'over-entitled' bit, irony noted

EDIT: slight rephrasing

Still won't prevent your data vanishing if the operation gets taken down like his last one did. And for that reason alone I'll steer clear of it and stick to cloud providers much less likely to come under fire from government agencies or media company lawyers.

Yup I trust Google Drive and Dropbox SO MUCH MORE than I would trust my own backups and local files on hard drives.

You're a fool. Google and Dropbox do not care anywhere near as much about your data as you do. Offsite backups are important, but the one you can reach out and touch with your own hand is the most trustworthy.

Pfff the funny thing is that people who scream the loudest about backups often have the worst backup scheduling themselves. I know a lot of IT professionals who have no recent backup of their data, not even talking about having a backup in a different location in case of a fire.

Dropbox and Google are professionals and they care A LOT about the safeness of my data. Just because a major data destruction would be deadly for their reputation. I would assume they care more about it than I do.

Speak for yourself, I have a Windows home server which backs up my three systems daily, my laptop as required (before and after trips), and that is backed up on an external drive. Finally retired my SCSI DLT a few years ago.

Totally speculating, but I wonder if encryption plays a part in that. I believe most services make significant use of deduplication to reduce storage costs. If 10,000 people upload the same file, the server can simply store one copy and then have 9999 pointers to it. With a big enough, diverse enough set of users that can be significant space savings. Pervasive client-side encryption though makes that impossible. It also makes corruption a much bigger deal. I'll be curious seeing what their actual business model is in the end. Plenty of other storage services (like SpiderOak) follow that zero-knowledge policy too, but they also offer much, much less space for free. I'm not sure how they plan to handle key sharing, or even if they still plan on a true zero-knowledge policy.

It doesn't need to be good encryption that would make your cpu flutter at the load, but it can also include some form of compression to boot. Something as simple as taking a file & doing some mild compression of every other bit into two different files named for their resulting checksums would be entirely clientside & pretty much impossible to reproduce without knowing which two checksums go together or which is the even set and odd set. Things would become exponentially more difficult if the two files were always stored on different servers/DC's. Basically, they could compress the files & offload the weight of doing the (de)compression to the client

If you take a look at the link, it says your data will be encrypted with only you (and who ever you share it with) having the key to decrypt the info. Also says the data will be on many servers, with Mr Dot Com paying people willing to provide storage.

Isn't Mega supposed to be using pervasive client-side encryption of files? That seemed like a key part of the plan, and a zero-knowledge policy could be a good way to kill many birds with one stone. By making it so that none of the data can be read without having the user owned keys Mega has both made it vastly harder to impossible for other parties to conduct fishing expeditions, and at the same time made it easier to police themselves. I seem to recall that one of the shadier aspects of MU's arguments involved evidence that employees had built internal search tools and such, and were in many cases quite aware of what was going on. Having it all encrypted client-side makes that unfeasible too, and in turn would help preserve them from temptation and ensure that Mega was staying on the right side of the law. They could still have a DMCA takedowns too, though keys would be needed.

Encryption wouldn't be entirely free though. While being client-side it wouldn't cost them any CPU, in fact it might save them CPU by doing away with the need for SSL connections in general (beyond login), it would hit data:

Quote:

And although 50GB is a lot for a free tier in the world of online storage systems, it's actually just a quarter of what Megaupload offered. As we noted after the site was shut down by the feds for alleged copyright law violations, Megaupload users got 200GB of storage for free, and could upload files as big as 2GB apiece.

Totally speculating, but I wonder if encryption plays a part in that. I believe most services make significant use of deduplication to reduce storage costs. If 10,000 people upload the same file, the server can simply store one copy and then have 9999 pointers to it. With a big enough, diverse enough set of users that can be significant space savings. Pervasive client-side encryption though makes that impossible. It also makes corruption a much bigger deal. I'll be curious seeing what their actual business model is in the end. Plenty of other storage services (like SpiderOak) follow that zero-knowledge policy too, but they also offer much, much less space for free. I'm not sure how they plan to handle key sharing, or even if they still plan on a true zero-knowledge policy.

Mega will probably use a standard encryption method and a standard checksum algorithm, they will then client-side encrypt their stuff, and each file will have it's key stored in a database, and do dedupe that way.

Yes and no. There is a way it could work depending on traffic patterns though.

If the vast majority of users are outside NZ and most files get many more reads than writes, then the traffic will mostly be leaving NZ rather than coming in. NZs international links are underutilised in that direction.

By uploading lots of data overseas (especially to the US), his bandwidth provider will be able to both negotiate peering arrangements from a much stronger position and take advantage of the undersea cables that have lots of spare capacity in that direction.

I have no idea exactly how advantageous this would be, but it does make things look less doubtful.

Personally I would imagine getting the datacentre, server and storage infrastructure cheap enough in NZ would be at least as much a problem. NZ hosting is usually very expensive.

Yup I trust Google Drive and Dropbox SO MUCH MORE than I would trust my own backups and local files on hard drives.

You're a fool. Google and Dropbox do not care anywhere near as much about your data as you do. Offsite backups are important, but the one you can reach out and touch with your own hand is the most trustworthy.

Not to mention, if the information is important enough to backup, I don't know I would want it in a "cloud" where not only I could lose access to it from the account getting compromised, but whoever compromised that account would suddenly have access to those files.